World's 14 best aviation museums

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Photos:14 best aviation museums

14. Palm Springs Air Museum – This small museum in Palm Springs, California, is one of the few where you can climb inside exhibits, talk to a pilot or take a biplane ride.

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Photos:14 best aviation museums

13. Central Museum of Air Forces – A shrine to Cold War aviation, this museum 24 miles outside Moscow is considered Russia's best. Shown are an Su25 and a Tu144.

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12. Royal Flying Doctor Service Museum – In Alice Springs, Australia, visitors can check out the inside of a Pilatus PC12 (the aircraft used by the Royal Flying Doctor Service) and historic radios.

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11. Red Bull Hangar-7 – In Salzburg, Austria, Hangar-7 is one of the most beautiful aviation museums in the world. The building holds a rare Cessna C337, a Boeing PT-17 (known as the Harley Davidson of the sky) and three lightning-quick Alpha jets.

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10. Canada Aviation and Space Museum – With more than 130 aircraft, highlights of this Ottawa museum include the nose section of an Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, one of few remaining parts of the Canadian-built fighter jet.

8. Polish Aviation Museum – Communist-era aircraft dominate this collection in Krakow, Poland. It's located on one of the oldest military airfields in Europe.

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7. Pima Air & Space Museum – Pima's most popular attraction is the Boneyard, aka the place planes go to die. In Tucson, Arizona, the area covers 2,600 acres and contains the rusting hulks of 4,000 retired aircraft.

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6. State Aviation Museum of Ukraine – This Kiev museum houses one of the world's biggest displays of aviation technology. The majority of the aircraft were built by the Soviet Union. Exhibits include supersonic bombers.

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5. French Air and Space Museum – Located near Paris, some of the museum's exhibits date to the 16th century. Its double Concorde display is the only one in the world.

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4. Future of Flight Center/Boeing Tour – If you want to design your own jet or sit in a simulator to experience a Battle of Iwo Jima dogfight, the Future of Flight Aviation Center and Boeing Tour in Everett, Washington, is the place to go. The main attraction is a tour of Boeing's enormous assembly plant.

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3. National Museum of the USAF – As well as the B-17F "Memphis Belle," the museum's presidential gallery holds the aircraft serving as Air Force One the day president John F. Kennedy was shot. The National Museum of the USAF is located on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.

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2. Imperial War Museum Duxford – The aviation museum at Duxford, UK, offers arguably the world's best visitor experience. "The thing that makes this place is atmosphere," says aviation expert Andy Saunders. "The fact that Spitfires, Me 109s, B-17s and P-51 aircraft can be seen flying here makes this place the ultimate museum of its genre."

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1. Smithsonian Nat'l Air and Space Museum – Each year, 8 million people visit this Smithsonian museum in Washington. D.C. One of many highlights is the Apollo 11 Command Module, "Columbia," which brought Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins home after the world's first moon walk.

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Story highlights

Smithsonian National Air and Space museum contains Space Shuttle

Salzburg's Red Bull Hangar-7 is one of the most beautiful aviation museums

A collection of retired planes make up Pima Air & Space Museum's popular "Boneyard"

Panel of aviation experts helped us pick the best museums

Recent months have brought important anniversaries in the world of aviation.

Orville Wright completed the world's first powered flight on December 14, 1903. (Debate persists on whether the first "successful" powered flight took place on December 14 or December 17 of 1903. Though others disagree, thewrightbrothers.org website recognizes October 14 as the first of the Wright Brother's first five flights.)

The first commercial flight, from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Tampa, Florida, took place in January 1914.

That 23-minute flight, for which most passengers paid $5 each, took place in a wood and muslin biplane flying boat.

In other words, not much worse than a few budget airline flights we've endured in the modern era.

The world's best aviation museums capture the achievements and products of the pilots, designers and engineers who got us from those rickety first flights to space travel and people clipping their toenails next to us in seat 17B.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) museum is housed inside what was once the RFDS radio house.

Visitors can peer inside a Pilatus PC12, the aircraft used by the service.

There's also a display of historic radios and medical equipment.

In the 70-seat theater, visitors hear amazing stories of survival from those who've been visited by the flying doctors.

"The service was founded by a minister, Reverend John Flynn, in 1928," says museum manager Andrew Rutter.

"Reverend Flynn envisaged a 'mantle of safety' that provided healthcare to Australians, wherever they lived. The story began with a de Havilland DH50 leased in 1928 from the then fledgling Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service, which later became Qantas."

Owned by Red Bull founder and billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull Hangar-7 is one of the world's most beautiful aviation museums.

The main building -- made from 1,200 tons of steel and 380 tons of glass -- contains Red Bull's fleet of Flying Bull stunt planes, a rare Cessna C337, a Boeing PT-17 (known as the Harley Davidson of the sky) and three 1,000-kilometer-per-hour Alpha jets, which were purchased by Red Bull's stunt team from the German air force.

It also has collections of F1 cars, motorbikes and plants.

Between the speed machines, visitors can spot some of the world's rarest greenery, including swamp date palms from Indochina, mulberry weeping figs and Japanese Kusamaki trees.

Home to more than 130 aircraft from around the world, highlights here include the nose section of an Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow (one of few remaining parts of the Canadian-built fighter jet) and a flight simulator.

In summer, visitors can take short flights in a 1939 Waco UPF-7 biplane.

"Our collection features original aircraft as opposed to reproduced versions," points out Stephen Quick, the museum's director general.

"Only in Ottawa can you see Professor Junker's first all-metal aircraft from 1917, an HS2L flying boat resurrected from Canada's lakes and the prototype de Havilland Canada Beaver."

"It houses a remarkable display of un-restored, pre-World War I aircraft still in the tattered state in which they were rediscovered in Poland at the end of World War II, having been spirited away from the great Deutsche Luftfahrtsammlung in Berlin to save them from Allied bombing," says Michael Oakey, managing editor at The Aviation Historian.

The museum is located on Rakowice-Czyżny, one of the oldest military airfields in Europe; the airfield played a part in defending the Krakow Fortress during World War I.

The base served as a pilot school during the 1920 Polish-Soviet War and by the late 1920s it had become the second largest air base in Poland.

"It's one for the connoisseur, with a time-capsule of untouched pre-World War I aircraft, plus a rare example (from the 1970s) of the world's only production jet-powered biplane," says Oakey of the PZL M-15 Belphegor.

This museum houses one of the world's biggest displays of aviation technology.

The museum is operated by Ukraine's National Aviation University, which uses the site for training and education.

The majority of the aircraft are ones built by the Soviet Union and exhibits include supersonic bomber planes, transport planes and nuclear missile carriers.

One of the most impressive exhibits is the Tupolev-104.

"On September 15, 1956, a very important event for civil aviation occurred," explains Professor Felix Yanovsky, head of electronics at the National Aviation University.

"The world's first jet airliner, the Tupolev-104, made its first passenger flight between Moscow and Irkutsk. This plane is now in the State Aviation Museum of Ukraine, and it's the oldest surviving aircraft of this type."

Concordes: Long-haul passengers would rejoice if these would fly again.

It covers 1.6 million square feet and contains 19,595 exhibits -- some of which date to the 16th century.

It houses the only known remaining piece of the L'Oiseau Blanc, the aircraft used by Charles Nungesser and François Coli in their attempt to make the first transatlantic crossing from Paris to New York in 1927, two weeks before Charles Lindbergh's successful flight in the opposite direction.

They took off from Paris, but were never seen again.

This museum is the only place you can see two Concordes side by side.

"The highlight is the Concordes," says Graham Braithwaite, an aviation professor at the UK's Cranfield University.

"They're a reminder of the technical achievement that united the British and French.

"It's poignant to see them so close to where the Air France Concorde crashed with the loss of all on board -- the beginning of the end for this remarkable aircraft."

3. National Museum of the United States Air Force (Ohio, United States)

The world's biggest and oldest military aviation museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, is huge, but well ordered.

"Its sheer scale is extraordinary -- it has about 17 acres of indoor display space, spread across several hangars and other buildings; and further outdoor display space for some of its larger aircraft," says Michael Oakey, managing editor at The Aviation Historian.

"You need at least a couple of days to get around it all."

The museum's lighting and exhibit presentation are extraordinary.

Exhibit galleries are divided by era.

In the early years, a SPAD XIII and Caproni CA 36 bomber are on display.

In the World War II gallery, there's the B-17F "Memphis Belle," the first U.S. Army heavy bomber to complete 25 missions over Europe and return stateside with its crew intact.

It was the inspiration for the 1990 film of the same name.

The keystone of the museum's presidential gallery is the Boeing VC-137C.

Known as SAM (Special Air Mission) 26000, it was the aircraft serving as Air Force One the day president John F. Kennedy was shot.

Once a British Royal Air Force station, the museum at Duxford is often mentioned in "best aviation museums" lists, and is particularly noteworthy for its world-leading collection of WWII planes.

"The thing that makes this place is, firstly, atmosphere; an original WWI and WWII military airfield that is now a living museum," says aviation author and researcher Andy Saunders.

"The fact that Spitfires, Me 109s, B-17s and P-51 aircraft can regularly be seen flying here (and not just during air display days) makes this place the ultimate museum of its genre."

Duxford's airdrome has played many roles.

It was a site for training Royal Flying Corps in 1917.

Later it became a base for squadron disbandment and then a fighter station in 1924.

It's home to Spitfires, a Lancaster bomber and a Concorde and visitors can get a close look at how aircraft like these are restored through the Conservation in Action program.

"You can watch as what are often ruined hulks are restored to apparently immaculate examples of aircraft -- some of which are the only ones in existence," says professor Graham Braithwaite of Cranfield University.

The summer season air shows at Duxford are arguably the best in the world, with zippy, acrobatic displays from iconic aircraft.

This year the museum will commemorate 70 years since D-Day in Normandy (June 6, 1944) with a special anniversary air show.

Visitors can also take a flying lesson in a vintage Warbird T6 Harvard while a Spitfire flies in formation alongside.

It's the sheer number of aircraft and artifacts that make this Washington, D.C., museum beloved by both the aviation-obsessed and the marginally curious.

"It's a museum that seems to have life and soul and I would challenge anyone with an inquiring mind, whether aviation enthusiast or not, not to find something here that engages and interests them," says aviation author and researcher Andy Saunders.

Eight million people every year visit the 60,000 exhibits and a public archive of more than 1.75 million photographs and 14,000 videos detailing aviation and space.

It has the world's first airplane, the "Wright Flyer" that made its debut flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, front and center in an exhibit dedicated to the onset of the aerial age.

Then there's the Apollo 11 Command Module, "Columbia," which brought Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins home after the world's first moon walk -- it was the only part of the spacecraft that made it back to Earth.

The museum's companion facility, the Udvar-Hazy Center, contains the Space Shuttle Discovery and the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber "Enola Gay," the aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II.

"The Smithsonian collection is the world's best," says Tom D. Crouch, senior curator of aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum. "Not to recognize that is simply not to be paying attention."